It's the last stop in a profession. It's a bitter place in that regard, because to stay there, to play there, you do what you have to do. As a player. As a coach. As a ball boy, even.

Everybody loves a good story, and that's a big reason why seemingly everybody in Scranton, and so many around the nation, have fallen in love with Matt McGloin. His story is a great one. One for the movies. One you tell your grandkids about and then marvel at how they hardly believe it.

It can't be true. It just can't.

But the reality of what he does for a living now, about the career path he has chosen, is that he has to separate himself from being the sentimental favorite and start being the quarterback he has all the ability to be.

Or else, all he's going to have is that story.

Three busloads of family and friends from Scranton rolled into MetLife Stadium early Sunday to support the one-time West Scranton star. A slew of rabid Raiders fans, including one who looks like Beetlejuice and another who calls himself Doctor Death, flew out from Oakland to back the record-setting Penn State favorite, too.

But once the second half started, it had become clear: The fans and his story and the feel-good vibes his climb from no-name to NFL quarterback weren't going to be able to save McGloin.

Only he could cement himself into the role he had worked every day for and defied every odd to hold. And that wasn't going to be easy.

When it seemed to many looking on at MetLife Stadium on Sunday that any series could be the end of McGloin's Cinderella ride as Oakland's starting quarterback and the beginning of Terrelle Pryor's return, McGloin played perhaps his best football as a pro.

Oakland lost, 37-27, to a Jets team that had been hapless offensively until Sunday. But McGloin rebounded from a so-so first half to show what Raiders coach Dennis Allen first saw in training camp and Penn State coach Bill O'Brien knew in the spring of 2012: There's something special about the guy. Something different.

In the first half, McGloin completed just 5 of 10 passes for 71 yards and a crucial interception by future Hall of Famer Ed Reed inside the Raiders 10.

In the second half: 13 for 21 for 174 yards, a pair of touchdowns and 24 points on the scoreboard under the Raiders' name.

But there was no celebrating. No touting the obvious, that this should be his team the rest of the way. No more I-told-you-sos and no more sunny chapters in his amazing story. Just the realization that only wins, and nothing else, will keep the ride going.

"I don't look at (the learning process) at all. It's a loss, and it's frustrating and disappointing," McGloin said. "You can say I'm experiencing things and learning about this and that, but I think that's all a bunch of excuses. It's another loss at the end of the day, and we do have to get better."

The NFL isn't about perception. It's about performance.

It's about results, and that's especially true when you aren't a first-round pick with a first-round pick's size and a star's reputation, playing for a team dying to return to glory that, at best, is long-lost.

McGloin came into this game as the starter, but the starter by the thinnest of margins. Head coach Dennis Allen vowed to find playing time for Pryor, the season-opening starter and former Ohio State star who may be McGloin's exact opposite when it comes to playing the quarterback position.

Pryor doesn't have McGloin's story. He just has everything an NFL team wants, on paper, in its starting quarterback. In the pocket, he stands 6-foot-4, weighs 233 pounds, and cuts an imposing figure. Outside of it, he runs with the best quarterbacks who have ever played the game. He has the look of a franchise quarterback, the type of player you'd expect to spend a first-round pick to get. But in his three seasons with the Raiders, all he has shown is that he lacks something intangible, something indescribable, that McGloin has.

Allen had his chances to use Pryor, too. He played the third series of the game, after McGloin started 3 for 4 for 28 yards, and marched the Raiders into Jets territory. Pryor used his legs effectively, hit a couple of passes early and marched the Raiders offense into Jets territory.

That drive stalled, but it proved a point. Pryor showed enough, just enough, to tease you with his athleticism, and so many coaches might have been tempted to give the elite prospect another chance.

But he never took another snap.

This is a sidebar to the story that McGloin knows all too well. It wouldn't have been a McGloin post-game interview, after all, if he didn't shrug his shoulders and express his dissatisfaction with having to share time, even if it's one series.

But remember, it took a while at Penn State for him to shake the specter of Rob Bolden, the prototype, the elite prospect. Allen seems to get it a bit better than Penn State's coaches did before O'Brien took over.

"Absolutely, I think he took positive steps in the second half," Allen said of McGloin. "What did we have, three touchdowns and a field goal in the second half, or something like that? I thought he did a nice job of moving the chains and mixing in a few runs in there, along with a few clutch passes. I think he did a good job."

No doubt, this is a great story. But he's going to need to be a great quarterback to keep this job. Buried beneath the scrap and the walk-on status and the moxie and the grit is the raw fact that McGloin has that potential. He doesn't have to be a career backup, like many feel he will be. Not that there's any shame in that, but McGloin is just a rookie. He's going to get better. He always gets better, and once he settled into the game, he got much better in the second half.

With 8:15 left in the third quarter, facing third and 4 with his team down 17 points, he calmly found tight end Mychal Rivera on a slant for the first down. The next play, fullback Marcel Reece sprinted up the middle for a 63-yard touchdown run.

On the next series, again down 17, again facing a key third down inside Jets territory, McGloin threw a slant pattern that somehow snuck past Raiders tight end Jeron Mastrud and a pair of Jets defender, and found a streaking Rod Streater for a 48-yard touchdown.

In the fourth quarter alone, McGloin converted three times on fourth down, including a 1-yard touchdown to Rivera that kept the Raiders breathing.

"As an offense, we settled in and made some adjustments at halftime, which was good to see," McGloin said. "We went out and played well in the second half. We continued to fight, continued to do everything we could to keep it close. Those were good things to see, too."

With that, he walked away, to talk to the family and friends who bussed into the Meadowlands hours earlier, celebrating the story and his resilience as much as the result.

But Matt McGloin knows these are big moments and big games, for his future and his career. He knows what playing well and piling up wins could mean, and he didn't seem satisfied that half a dominant game and another loss was quite good enough. For the Raiders. For himself.

The only way for this story to get better is if he gets better. And he will. The big question is, will the Raiders have the patience necessary to find out that McGloin is more than just the Cinderella story from West Scranton, proving all the doubters wrong by simply being on the field?

This is a tough league to do that.

But Matt McGloin is a tough kid. And a tough quarterback, too.

DONNIE COLLINS is a columnist for The Times-Tribune. Contact him at dcollins@timesshamrock.com and follow him on Twitter @psubst.

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